Review: Guitar Rock Tour 2 HD
Score:
62%
A capacitive screen isn't a great replacement for a Fender Stratocaster, but Gameloft's Guitar Rock Tour 2 HD brings the rock-rhythm genre to the new Symbian devices. But is your smartphone the best choice of musical instrument to take you on a digital career around the world? Probably not, but not because Gameloft haven't tried their best.
Version Reviewed: 1.0.2
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Start the application and you get the classic riff and chords from “I “Wanna Rock” as made famous by Twisted Sister. Right away that puts me at ease, although I could see some people think “isn’t that by DJ Jazzy Jeff?” while other, younger, smartphone users don’t recognise it at all.
Bless.
This is one of the many “clone” rhythm games following up on the success of Guitar Hero and Rock Band on the major consoles. Both of these games have two advantages over a mobile version.
The first and most obvious one is that they usually have full size guitars or drum kits to play with. It’s impossible to replicate that experience on a touch screen. The second is that when you decide to play one of these games, you can generally give over all your concentration to the HD TV, huge musical sound and keep half an eye on the graphics of the band action.
None of this is possible with the Symbian version, and while the idea of a mobile version of the musical rhythm games continues to be attempted by the developers, it’s only been achieved to any great success when the unique properties of a mobile device are taken into consideration (Tap Tap Revenge, Dance Fabulous or Rock Band Unplugged) – try to do a straight conversion and while you end up with a nice game, it just doesn’t have a good feel to it.
This is what’s happened here. Rock Guitar 2 follows the bigger format games with a view of your band in the top half of the screen, with a grid at the bottom half. This is where the notes will descend from the top of the screen with a touch of perspective so they appear to be coming towards you down towards your guitar or drum kit (you can choose to play either part). Play the notes well, and the song continues. Play poorly and your instrument will stop playing on the audio track. Keep performing badly, and it’ll be game over.
You have four lines which the notes can come down and when they hit the bottom of the grid, you need to tap the virtual button it passes. There will be times when two notes will need to be hit at once, and other times when you can hold down the button for extra points and to build up your bonus power.
That bonus power is a gauge at the top right of the screen, and one this has got some oomph in it, you can flip your 'overdrive' switch and while it doesn’t change the fundamental gameplay, it does give you a score multiplier. And the more score you build up, the more levels that you open up in the career mode. That’s vital, because when you start, not all the songs are open to you. They become available in the career mode through earning points and passing challenges (such as getting 80% of the notes right in a solo).
But in my mind, Rock Guitar has a problem. And it’s a fundamental one in a game like this. The notes don’t match up with the music that’s being played. While this HD version provides a proper musical track (rather than the feeble MIDI attempts in the java version) and you can hear the different guitar, drum, bass and vocal tracks, the notes that are coming down don’t match up to the beat, they don’t feel like they are in a consistent musical shape (a chord progression in one song doesn’t have the same pattern of notes in another song) and, most importantly, you can’t play by ear.
By that I mean you have to watch the notes crossing the target button at the bottom for the right time to press them – you can’t rely on the beat of the music because it is very slightly off. It’s annoying at the Easy skill level, but makes Medium and Hard levels more a game of reaction to the notes rather than absorbing the notes and playing along. For me, this kills the spirit of the game.
I can live with the deadly phrase of “as made famous by David Bowie” when the cover of Ziggy Stardust sounds like a bad night at karaoke; I can ignore the graphics of the band at the top of the screen that aren’t always in sync with the music being played; and there’s no issue with the graphical representation of either the onscreen band or the descending notes on the fretboard/grid.
What I can’t live with is that Rock Guitar 2 HD isn’t fun to play. Playing through each song feels like hard work, grinding through the notes to see what comes up next, rather than for the enjoyment of that song.
Technically all the pieces of code work. Rock ‘n’ roll is all about heart, and there’s very little heart in this game.
-- Ewan Spence, Nov 2010.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at